Dan Rostenkowski

* It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Of course, I refer to the happy circumstance of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski getting caught with his rapacious hand in the House Post Office cookie jar ("Rostenkowski Implicated in Postal Scam," July 20).

Rostenkowski, the member of Congress most culpable of the ruinous budget acts of 1986, 1990, and 1991, the blood-sucking hatchet man of the Democratic Party, the poster boy of the term limit movement, the patronage-artist chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who was mobbed by angry citizens of his own district, has done nothing more than demonstrate his callous arrogance, and the contempt in which he holds not only his own constituency, but the American people.

The socialist Democrats bemoan the fact that he was busted, as his efforts are considered essential to the passing of the largest, most expensive social program ever proposed, i.e., national health insurance, apparently in total indifference to his base and audacious corruption. This should expose the socialist Democrats for what they are: immoral hacks for whom the ends justify the (Ways and) means.

Censuring would be too good for Rostenkowski. Expulsion and reparation are called for.

RICK WIGGINS

Pasadena

* I take back the mean things I've been saying about President Clinton.

His decision to fire FBI Director William Sessions and divulge his gays-in-the-military policy on the same day (July 20) that the House of Representatives' post office shenanigans were announced was simply brilliant.